The present invention relates to a printing apparatus which can print using a font memory specified from a plurality of font memories irrespective of mounting position, and a specifying method therefor.
Various conventional printing apparatuses can print single documents with several fonts (e.g., gothic, italic, etc.). Such printing apparatuses have a cartridge mounted thereon containing a plurality of font memories which store font data to effect the operation described above. Therefore, when font memories or cartridges are exchanged in accordance with a font to be printed, a document featuring various fonts can be produced.
In such a printing apparatus, each font memory is uniquely determined by a font specifying number corresponding to its physical mounting position in the cartridge. More specifically, a printing operation is carried out by a font memory corresponding to the font specifying number specified by a user in a program, and the printing apparatus itself has no determination means for specifying the font memory. For this reason, when a user selects a desired font (i.e., a desired font memory), a printing program must be modified to correspond to a given font specifying memory, or a mounting position of the font memory in the cartridge must be changed. Therefore, conventional apparatus are very inconvenient to use because erroneously selected fonts can only be found by checking the printed output.